Equating barefoot golf caddies to lynching victims

Believe it or not, that is exactly what one idiot on the Orlando city council tried to do yesterday.

On opening day of the newly-refurbished city-owned Dubsdread Golfcourse, the adjacent Taproom restaurant had the audacity to re-hang a series of old sepia-toned photos that have been a feature of the establishment since they were taken in the 1930s. The nerve of it!

One of the pictures features an African American caddy, who happens to be barefoot. Yours truly is unashamedly posting a copy of said picture here, despite the possible scandal and mayhem that may ensue in this little corner of the blogosphere.

Anyway, one of the attendees of the grand reopening raised the initial objection to the photo, and was ignored for the idiot he or she evidently is.

Not to be deterred, the offendee ran crying and hand-wringing to the always-credible Daisy Lynum, who has been wasting space down at City Hall for years. Always eager to pounce on anything with the slightest potential of racial divisiveness, but without so much as bothering to actually view the photo herself, she demanded it be relegated to the collections of The History Center and made the following declaration to local media: "They say it's a part of history, but so is lynching and killing. Do we keep those pictures on display?"

What an idiot.

I mean, who in their right mind could equate a barefoot caddy to the victim of racial violence?! I'm pretty sure the caddy in question was working voluntarily for those evil white golfers in the photo. And, I'm pretty sure a lot of their evil white children were running around barefoot, too. It's Florida. It's warm. It was in the middle of The Great Depression. Things like that happened.

Fortunately, sanity prevailed in the person of Byron Brooks, the city's Chief Administrative Officer, who also happens to be an African American. He actually took the time to view the photo and refuted Lynum's half-cocked assessment of it, saying he "didn't feel it depicted any kind of racial stereotype--it's just a period picture."

Right on, Byron!

When will our elected officials, and particularly the lovely Ms. Lynum, get off their duffs and start addressing the real concerns of their constituents? It is their political grandstanding that needs to be relegated to the dustbin of history, not photos of our forebears hanging on the walls at golf course tap rooms.

Okay, off the soap box now. Have a good weekend. Maybe, work in a couple rounds of golf while you're at it, ok?!